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Here is a fun little application I found today. I’m not recommending anything beyong looking at an interesting piece of software.

With today’s discovery, eliminating dups can save a lot of time and money in processing. Again, I’m not advocating use of this product to filter out dups from client discovery. Although, perhaps you could use it on your own email. I don’t make any warranties about this product, so make a backup. At any rate, the following info is relevant to our industry, so here it is. If nothing else, it may give the folks at a few discovery processing software companies a few ideas.

Outlook Duplicate Items Remover 1.2

Available as a free download: Viata.com

Free, Fast and easy tool for removing duplicate items from Outlook foldersWith ODIR it’s a snap to clean your Outlook folders by removing all duplicates. ODIR removes duplicates from Contacts; Calendar; Tasks; Notes and Email folders.

Using ODIR is very easy: select a folder and click the button Remove Duplicate Items. ODIR scans the selected folder for duplicates and MOVES all duplicates found to a subfolder ODIR_duplicate items. ODIR recognizes an item as a duplicate if all of the following properties match those of another item in the same folder:

• Contact items:
  first name, last name, company name and email address
• Appointment items:
  subject, location, start date and end date
• Task items:
  subject, start date, due date and status
• Note items:
  contents of the note (Body property) and color
• E-mail or Post items:
  - received emails: the internet message ID (this is a unique identifier for each email received)
  - sent emails: email subject and the time the email is sent (PR_CLIENT_SUBMIT_TIME)
  - unsent emails: email subject only

ODIR 1.2 is FREE and doesn’t contain Spyware or Adds! 

Scenario - You stored work product on a thumb drive. Unfortunately the drive was lost in the court room! Anyone could have picked it up. By using this free software, no one will even know your encrypted data is there.  

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003 and Linux 

Visit http://www.truecrypt.org/

Main Features:

1. Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
2. Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.
3. Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
4. Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
1. Hidden volume (steganography – more information may be found here).
2. No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).

Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Blowfish (448-bit key), CAST5, Serpent, Triple DES, and Twofish.

Mode of operation: LRW  (CBC supported as legacy).

Conceived in 2003.
Further information regarding features of the software may be found in the documentation.
TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g.., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

Files can be copied to and from a mounted TrueCrypt volume just like they are copied to/from any normal disk (for example, by simple drag-and-drop operations). Files are automatically being decrypted on-the-fly (in memory/RAM) while they are being read or copied from an encrypted TrueCrypt volume. Similarly, files that are being written or copied to the TrueCrypt volume are automatically being encrypted on-the-fly (right before they are written to the disk) in RAM. Note that this does not mean that the whole file that is to be encrypted/decrypted must be stored in RAM before it can be encrypted/decrypted. The are no extra memory (RAM) requirements for TrueCrypt. For an illustration of how this is accomplished, see the following paragraph.

Let’s suppose that there is an .avi video file stored on a TrueCrypt volume (therefore, the video file is entirely encrypted). The user provides the correct password (and/or keyfile) and mounts (opens) the TrueCrypt volume. When the user double clicks the icon of the video file, the operating system launches the application associated with the file type – typically a media player. The media player then begins loading a small initial portion of the video file from the TrueCrypt-encrypted volume to RAM (memory) in order to play it. While the portion is being loaded, TrueCrypt is automatically decrypting it (in RAM). The decrypted portion of the video (stored in RAM) is then played by the media player. While this portion is being played, the media player begins loading next small portion of the video file from the TrueCrypt-encrypted volume to RAM (memory) and the process repeats. This process is called on-the-fly encryption/decryption and it works for all file types, not only for video files.

Note that TrueCrypt never saves any decrypted data to a disk – it only stores them temporarily in RAM (memory). Even when the volume is mounted, data stored in the volume is still encrypted. When you restart Windows or turn off your computer, the volume will be dismounted and files stored in it will be inaccessible (and encrypted). Even when power supply is suddenly interrupted (without proper system shut down), files stored in the volume are inaccessible (and encrypted). To make them accessible again, you have to mount the volume (and provide the correct password and/or keyfile).